the relatively influential Beijing and Canton dialects have fewer literary readings than other varieties. In some Chinese varieties, there may be many instances of foreign readings replacing native readings, forming many sets of literary and colloquial readings. A newer literary reading may replace an older literary reading, and the older literary reading may become disused or become a new colloquial reading. Sometimes literary and colloquial readings of the same character have different meanings. The analogous phenomenon exists to a much more significant degree in Japanese, where individual characters (kanji) generally have two common readings – the newer borrowed, more formal on'yomi, and the older native, more colloquial kun'yomi. Unlike in Chinese varieties, which are genetically related, in Japanese the borrowed readings are unrelated to the native readings. Further, many kanji in fact have several borrowed readings, reflecting borrowings at different periods – these multiple borrowings are generally doublets or triplets, sometimes quite distant. These readings are generally used in particular contexts, such as older readings for Buddhist terms, which were early borrowings. Behavior in Chinese Cantonese In Cantonese, there are regular relationships between the nuclei of literary and colloquial readings. Colloquial readings with nuclei correspond with literary and nuclei. It is also the case with colloquial and literary , and colloquial and literary . Of course, not all colloquial readings with a certain nucleus correspond to literary readings with another nucleus. The meaning of a character is often differentiated depending on whether it is read with a colloquial or literary reading. Examples: Hakka Hakka contains instances of differing literary and colloquial readings. Examples: Mandarin Literary readings in Modern Standard Mandarin are usually native pronunciations more conservative than colloquial readings. This is because they reflect readings from before Beijing was the capital, e.g. from the Ming Dynasty. Most instances where there are different literary and colloquial readings occur with characters that have entering tones. Among those are primarily literary readings that have not been adopted into the Beijing dialect before the Yuan Dynasty. Colloquial readings of other regions have also been adopted into the Beijing dialect, a major difference being that literary readings are usually adopted with the colloquial readings. Some of the differences between the national standards of Taiwanese Mandarin and mainland Chinese Pǔtōnghuà are due to the fact that Putonghua tends to adopt colloquial readings for a character while Guoyu tends to adopt a literary reading. Examples of literary